A Clash of Kings

Theon had planned that attack as well, bringing his ships up to the shore in the chill darkness before the dawn and leaping from the prow with a longaxe in his hand to lead his men into the sleeping village. He did not like the taste of any of this, but what choice did he have?

His thrice-damned sister was sailing her Black Wind north even now, sure to win a castle of her own. Lord Balon had let no word of the hosting escape the Iron Islands, and Theon’s bloody work along the Stony Shore would be put down to sea raiders out for plunder. The northmen would not realize their true peril, not until the hammers fell on Deepwood Motte and Moat Cailin. And after all is done and won, they will make songs for that bitch Asha, and forget that I was even here. That is, if he allowed it.

Dagmer Cleftjaw stood by the high carved prow of his longship, Foamdrinker. Theon had assigned him the task of guarding the ships; otherwise men would have called it Dagmer’s victory, not his. A more prickly man might have taken that for a slight, but the Cleftjaw had only laughed.

“The day is won,” Dagmer called down. “And yet you do not smile, boy. The living should smile, for the dead cannot.” He smiled himself to show how it was done. It made for a hideous sight. Under a snowy white mane of hair, Dagmer Cleftjaw had the most gut-churning scar Theon had ever seen, the legacy of the longaxe that had near killed him as a boy. The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two. A shaggy beard covered his cheeks and neck, but the hair would not grow over the scar, so a shiny seam of puckered, twisted flesh divided his face like a crevasse through a snowfield. “We could hear them singing,” the old warrior said. “It was a good song, and they sang it bravely.”

“They sang better than they fought. Harps would have done them as much good as their lances did.”

“How many men are lost?”

“Of ours?” Theon shrugged. “Todric. I killed him for getting drunk and fighting over loot.”

“Some men are born to be killed.” A lesser man might have been afraid to show a smile as frightening as his, yet Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had.

Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he’d jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. He’d seen it when he blocked a blow from Dagmer’s sword, when he put an arrow through a seagull on the wing, when he took the tiller in hand and guided a longship safely through a snarl of foaming rocks. He gave me more smiles than my father and Eddard Stark together. Even Robb… he ought to have won a smile the day he’d saved Bran from that wildling, but instead he’d gotten a scolding, as if he were some cook who’d burned the stew.

“You and I must talk, Uncle,” Theon said. Dagmer was no true uncle, only a sworn man with perhaps a pinch of Greyjoy blood four or five lives back, and that from the wrong side of the blanket. Yet Theon had always called him uncle nonetheless.

“Come onto my deck, then.” There were no m’lords from Dagmer, not when he stood on his own deck. On the Iron Islands, every captain was a king aboard his own ship.

He climbed the plank to the deck of the Foamdrinker in four long strides, and Dagmer led him back to the cramped aft cabin, where the old man poured a horn of sour ale and offered Theon the same. He declined. “We did not capture enough horses. A few, but… well, I’ll make do with what I have, I suppose. Fewer men means more glory.”

“What need do we have of horses?” Like most ironmen, Dagmer preferred to fight on foot or from the deck of a ship. “Horses will only shit on our decks and get in our way.”

“If we sailed, yes,” Theon admitted. “I have another plan.” He watched the other carefully to see how he would take that. Without the Cleftjaw he could not hope to succeed. Command or no, the men would never follow him if both Aeron and Dagmer opposed him, and he had no hope of winning over the sour-faced priest.

“Your lord father commanded us to harry the coast, no more.” Eyes pale as sea foam watched Theon from under those shaggy white eyebrows. Was it disapproval he saw there, or a spark of interest? The latter, he thought… hoped…

“You are my father’s man.”

“His best man, and always have been.”

Pride, Theon thought. He is proud, I must use that, his pride will be the key. “There is no man in the Iron Islands half so skilled with spear or sword.”

“You have been too long away, boy. When you left, it was as you say, but I am grown old in Lord Greyjoy’s service. The singers call Andrik best now. Andrik the Unsmiling, they name him. A giant of a man. He serves Lord Drumm of Old Wyk. And Black Lorren and Qarl the Maid are near as dread.”

“This Andrik may be a great fighter, but men do not fear him as they fear you.”

“Aye, that’s so,” Dagmer said. The fingers curled around the drinking horn were heavy with rings, gold and silver and bronze, set with chunks of sapphire and garnet and dragonglass. He had paid the iron price for every one, Theon knew.

“If I had a man like you in my service, I should not waste him on this child’s business of harrying and burning. This is no work for Lord Balon’s best man…”

Dagmer’s grin twisted his lips apart and showed the brown splinters of his teeth. “Nor for his trueborn son?” He hooted. “I know you too well, Theon. I saw you take your first step, helped you bend your first bow. ‘Tis not me who feels wasted.”

“By rights I should have my sister’s command,” he admitted, uncomfortably aware of how peevish that sounded.

“You take this business too hard, boy. It is only that your lord father does not know you. With your brothers dead and you taken by the wolves, your sister was his solace. He learned to rely on her, and she has never failed him.”

“Nor have I. The Starks knew my worth. I was one of Brynden Blackfish’s picked scouts, and I charged with the first wave in the Whispering Wood. I was that close to crossing swords with the Kingslayer himself.” Theon held his hands two feet apart. “Daryn Hornwood came between us, and died for it.”

“Why do you tell me this?” Dagmer asked. “It was me who put your first sword in your hand. I know you are no craven.”

“Does my father?”

The hoary old warrior looked as if he had bitten into something he did not like the taste of. “It is only… Theon, the Boy Wolf is your friend, and these Starks had you for ten years.”

“I am no Stark.” Lord Eddard saw to that. “I am a Greyjoy, and I mean to be my father’s heir. How can I do that unless I prove myself with some great deed?”

“You are young. Other wars will come, and you shall do your great deeds. For now, we are commanded to harry the Stony Shore.”

“Let my uncle Aeron see to it. I’ll give him six ships, all but Foamdrinker and Sea Bitch, and he can burn and drown to his god’s surfeit.”

“The command was given you, not Aeron Damphair.”

“So long as the harrying is done, what does it matter? No priest could do what I mean to, nor what I ask of you. I have a task that only Dagmer Cleftjaw can accomplish.”

Dagmer took a long draught from his horn. “Tell me.”

He is tempted, Theon thought. He likes this reaver’s work no better than I do. “If my sister can take a castle, so can I.”

“Asha has four or five times the men we do.”

Theon allowed himself a sly smile. “But we have four times the wits, and five times the courage.”

“Your father—”

“—will thank me, when I hand him his kingdom. I mean to do a deed that the harpers will sing of for a thousand years.”

He knew that would give Dagmer pause. A singer had made a song about the axe that cracked his jaw in half, and the old man loved to hear it. Whenever he was in his cups he would call for a reaving song, something loud and stormy that told of dead heroes and deeds of wild valor. His hair is white and his teeth are rotten, but he still has a taste for glory.

“What would my part be in this scheme of yours, boy?” Dagmer Cleftjaw asked after a long silence, and Theon knew he had won.

“To strike terror into the heart of the foe, as only one of your name could do. You’ll take the great part of our